


tenth hour of the day

by craftingdead



Series: charlie will make cd a common tag if it kills them [33]
Category: The Crafting Dead
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff and Humor, Multi, Polyamory, but like in the good way, i usually hc jess as a lesbian but team sky ot3 is nice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-08 05:07:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19863991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/craftingdead/pseuds/craftingdead
Summary: Jess used to believe that ten was an unlucky number—everything bad happened to her on the tenth of anything, on the tenth hour, ten minutes past whatever. It seemed like the number was out to fucking get her, for whatever. But Sky boasts about eating ten cupcakes in a row once and Barney says that ten is his favorite number.





	tenth hour of the day

1.

Sure, Jess was friends with Barney, but… there was just something about him that pissed her off to all hell. It might have been the way he talked to her, it might have been the way he walked, the way he was reckless. Something about him just… annoyed her in a way that she couldn’t describe. Somehow.

“Don’t worry, Jet,” he mutters, hiking her back up from where she was slipping, hands gripping her legs. “I won’t let you fall.”

She nods against his neck, arms thrown limp over it as Sky cuts through the forest in front of him. Maybe he isn’t so bad after all.

2.

“Shut up!” Sky yells at Barney, over something stupid, over something idiotic, and Jess jumps before she can stop herself, eyes widening in confusion as Barney roars with laughter over something equally as stupid, as idiotic.

She doesn’t get why boys are like this. She kinda misses it back at the cabin where, at least, if she wanted some peace and quiet, she could go hide upstairs or ask Nick or AK if they wanted to help her scout out for supplies. Those two were always quiet.

“Is everything alright?” she asks hesitantly, watching as they snapped back to look at her. A second or two passes before they both burst out laughing—Barney’s even slapping his knee, bent over. “What? What did I do?”

“Nothing, Jess,” Sky says. “You did nothing."

3.

“I’LL KILL YOU!” Sky yells at the guards, preparing to rush them, and Jess can only picture the exact same thing a million different times over; yelling for his mom, his dad, his friends, his Barney. It feels like he’s said it a thousand times before, the same amount of passion sticking his words to his heart like it’s glue. 

Her leg burns, but she’s been shot before, so it’s bearable. The only difference it who she was shot by—Red and his men. She’s heard the horror stories from AK and Shark. Seen Ghetto’s anger. Felt Nick’s fear, despite how he tried to hide it. 

Barney stares at her, fearful, eyes wide, and she realizes how little he truly knows about what Red and his men could do. She barely knows herself. But her heart warms a little, at his caring and at Sky’s defiance. To be cared about—it feels good.

4.

She knows Sky and Barney have a… kind of a thing from the start. Jess always thought the way Barney talked about “Goat” was a little weird, felt too real for comfort, but she always excused it as just something Barney did. This “Goat” was his best friend, so he was going to talk about it like it truly was. It’s almost not a surprise when “Goat” turns out to be a human man named Sky and not an animal.

Sky wraps his arms around Barney’s waist and sighs from behind him. Jess turns her head respectfully, but not before she caught a raised eyebrow. A lazy smirk from a loose ponytail and Barney’s unknowingness.

Her face burns for a reason she can’t quite place. But Sky is kind of cute, and Barney’s not half-bad himself, despite how… in-fucking-sufferable he was all the time.

“Hey, Jet!” Barney calls over, and she almost jumps. She’s been doing that a lot around them. “Is something wrong?”

“No, no,” she calls back hastily, but still catches Sky’s grin and him whispering something in Barney’s ear as she turns to busy herself with something, with whatever—anything to ignore the fallout of whatever Sky just told him. A low “oooh” echoes from behind her and she resists the urge to throw a book at one of them.

5.

She kisses Barney’s cheek out of reflex once. A small “thank you” peck on the cheek. His eyes go wide and he gives out a little over-exaggerated gasp and touches the place on his face where her lips touched, as if he was living a dream.

“Oh, for fucks sake,” Jess exclaims as he yells at Sky to come check it out. “It was a kiss on the cheek. Do you lose your mind like this when your mother kisses you on the forehead, too? When a friend gives you a tender hug?”

“He does,” Sky says, seriously, and pulls his hand away. Observes the spot. “Disappointing. We might need to amputate it to avoid the spread of cooties. I’m sorry, Barney, I don’t know if you’ll survive the operation.”

“I can throw a mean right hook too,” Jess threatens.

“She can. Don’t fuck around with her. I might have gotten a kiss on this cheek, but the other once got punched so hard I thought I saw God and Jesus coming to take me to their castle in the sky… or whatever it is… I don’t actually know. Heaven? If so, I’m in heaven.”

6.

Ghetto would be jealous. Well, maybe, maybe not. She could practically smell the comphet drifting off of him the first time they met. He wouldn’t be as sad as he would be grateful, more than likely. He wouldn’t want to deal with the aftermath of his flirting.

Jess usually goes for girls as well, preferring their softness to the roughness of most of the guys she meets—the ones who actually want to get with her, that is—but Sky’s the perfect combination of both, and Barney is a swinging pendulum. She’s tougher than both of them, at the end of the day, but it feels nice to meet someone who actually cares.

7.

“So,” Ghetto starts. She doesn’t say anything or turn to look at him; she just tilts her head slightly, brushes her hair back from her ear. “What… okay, I know we heard tons of shit from Barney about him, but what is Sky really like?”

She stops for a second, and thinks.

“Well… he’s not as nice as Barney. Kind of an asshole, actually. Reminds me of you and AK. But he’s got a good heart. He’s saved me and Barney from… from multiple incidents that could have ended in disaster. He’s a good leader. Don’t tell Nick, but I think he might actually be a better one than him. He’s got some sort of anger issues, but that doesn’t make him any less of a good person. He’s also—what? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“No reason,” Ghetto says, but he’s smiling.

8.

“Your hair is a mess. Let me brush it.”

“Absolutely not,” Sky says, batting her hand away. “I have this ratty ponytail and I love it and if anyone touches it I’ll fucking murder them.”

“Okay,” Jess responds and, when he’s not looking, she attacks it with a wet comb and is bought by an absolutely blood curdling scream in response. Barney rushes in, panicked, but instead finds Jess fighting Sky back with a comb drenched in water, one hand holding him back and the other trying desperately to get to his hair because goddammit it’s fucking greasy!

“What the hells you two,” he says, putting his hands on his hips, and as Sky turns to look at him Jess rips his ponytail free.

9.

“What is Barney to you?” she asks one night, whispering to him in the dark. Sky stays silent for a while after that, Barney’s light snores and breathing the only thing in the space between them.

“I don’t know,” he says to her after a while, shifting on his side. “But I do know that I don’t know what I would do if I lost him. So that’s all I’m aiming for: not losing him.”

10.

“You know, I used to hate you,” Jess tells Barney one day.

“Well, I used to hate you too, so it’s fair game now."

“Good.” And then she punches him in the arm. AK raises an eyebrow at her and Shark grins and they ignore her cries for help as Barney swings her over his shoulder and threatens to throw her in the ocean.

"Sorry, Jess, can't help either!" Sky calls over and even though all her stupid ass guy friends are busy losing it, she has no idea how she got so lucky.


End file.
